Justices appear split on Ohio voter-purge case

WASHINGTON — Under a withering attack from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Ohio Solicitor Eric Murphy defended the state’s system to remove voters from the rolls, insisting that “nobody is removed solely by failure to vote.”

In oral arguments Wednesday in the U.S. Supreme Court, Sotomayor and Murphy engaged in a sharp debate over whether Ohio violates a 1993 federal law when it purges otherwise-eligible residents from the voter rolls if they fail to vote or respond to notices from the county board of elections during a six-year span.

Although Justices Elena Kagan and Ruth Bader Ginsburg expressed misgivings about the Ohio law, Sotomayor dominated the one-hour argument with her contention that Ohio’s system unfairly disenfranchises minorities because they tend not to vote as often.

Pointing out Americans have the constitutional right not to vote, Sotomayor asked Murphy how Ohio could read the 1993 law “to begin a process of disenfranchising ... with no independent evidence whatsoever that the person has moved?”

“There are dozens of other ways that you could verify a change of address, yet you're suggesting that using a failure to appear at an election or elections as evidence of moving when people have a right not to vote if they choose,” she said.

Murphy, however, replied that under Ohio law “nobody is removed solely by reason of their failure to vote,” adding “they're removed if they fail to respond to a notice and fail to vote over six years.”

Justice Samuel Alito sided with Murphy, saying that Ohio’s reliance on a failure to vote is only partial evidence that the person may have moved from the state. “It’s not the ground for removal in and of itself,” Alito said.

From the questions posed by the justices, it appeared that Justice Anthony Kennedy will cast the deciding vote, as he does in so many key cases.

Among roughly 50 people gathered outside the court to protest the Ohio law was Joe Helle, 31, mayor of Oak Harbor, which is between Sandusky and Toledo. Helle is now running for state representative in his northwest Ohio district.

Helle enlisted in the military when he was 18, and was eventually deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. He said he voted absentee while he was deployed, but when he returned to Ohio he discovered that the ballot apparently never arrived and he had been purged from the voter rolls.

In August 2011, he went to vote on a school district levy only to discover that he had been dropped from the rolls.

“I cried because of it,” he said.

But then he became outraged.

“An American Army service veteran defending this right comes home and cannot exercise it,” he said.” I cannot explain how terrible that is.”

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, a former secretary of state who filed legal papers with the court opposing the state law, told the crowd the case was about the “government trying to choose who should get to vote. That’s wrong.”

When Brown was secretary of state, the Ohio Constitution required voters be purged from the rolls if they had not voted in at least one election in any consecutive four–year period.

Brown enforced that provision, although his aides said he publicly reminded voters that if they did not vote or update their registration, they could be removed from the rolls. After he was elected to the U.S. House in 1992 he supported a 1993 law designed to make it more difficult for voters to be purged that overturned part of the Ohio constitutional provision he had been required to enforce.

Blaine Kelly, a spokesman for the Ohio Republican Party, said the “the statements made today by Sherrod Brown proves that his partisanship knows no bounds.”

“Claiming that Ohio’s current law is ‘a direct attack on democracy,’ without acknowledging the same about his own enforcement of stricter laws, is a textbook example of hypocrisy,” Kelly said.

But Brown defended his efforts to register more voters, saying when he was secretary of state, utilities would include voter registration materials in their bills and his office made registration applications available at state unemployment offices and when people went to renew their driver’s license.

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, who is running for lieutenant governor on a Republican ticket headed by Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, said after hearing the arguments at the high court "everyone that we’re talking about in this particular case has been reached out to multiple times by the state of Ohio and everybody wants to ask them to participate in our system of democracy."

Video: Mayor Joe Helle, of Oak Harbor, Ohio, talks about his interest in the case

Video: Senator Sherrod Brown discusses the case

jtorry@dispatch.com

@jacktorry1

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@jessicawehrman

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